Blade of Darkness Interview

Rebel Act's Blade of Darkness might be too attractive for its own good. In development for the best part of three years it draws admiring glances whenever it steps out for rare social occasions, but until now we never plucked the courage up to actually speak to the Spanish developer about the 3D RPG.

On the surface the game seems pretty traditional fare for the fantasy RPG crowd. The four playable characters are drawn from the usual range of Warrior, Dwarf, Amazon and Knight, with the usual goal of saving your primitive world from a general evil nastiness that always seems to threaten such places. However familiar as all this may appear, it has rarely looked this good in 3D. Slick visuals combined with a healthy mix of action, combat and exploration elements might just catapult this to the head of the pack.

The game has certainly captured the imaginations of several online factions who live and breathe the game, following each nuance of its development with a frightening intensity. Too intimidated to ask these die-hards, we turned to Jose Raluy, Rebel Act programmer, to lay down the facts about Blade and its world.

IGNPC: We might be displaying our ignorance compared to some of the hardcore Blade fans, but what's the background of Blade?

Jose Raluy: We're labelling Blade as a third-person RPG adventure in 3D. It starts off really simply with the choice of four different characters. These are split, quite typically, into four familiar character types. We've got the Amazon, warrior woman character, then we have the Dwarf, the Barbarian and the Knight. In terms of the plot you have to restore the balance in this medieval-type land, and that's about it really. A lot of swords and a bit of sorcery. Keeping the background simple is really important to us -- one of the key elements is that the story is being told through the game as it progresses. At the beginning you don't know much, apart from you have to restore the balance of power to a land that's threatened by evil forces.

IGNPC: Which character you choose is obviously central to the start of the game. How do the characters differ?

Jose Raluy: Each character will have a slightly different adventure or goal in the game, besides generally killing the bad guys. The main differences really are in combat, which is quite heavily influenced by fighting games. All the characters have very different moves -- like say, the Amazon is much better fighting with a spear, whereas the Barbarian's weapon of choice is a two-handed sword. So, if he's using a spear instead of a sword ever he's going to have a few problems performing combos -- in fact he's going to have a much smaller number of combos with that weapon than some of the other characters.

At the beginning the difference in the characters is not that much, as everyone's experience level is very low. But then, as you progress and get more experience, mainly through killing enemies, you get more sets of combos particularly geared to your character's weapon preference. So the Knight is going to get much more sets of combos for the normal sword, the Barbarian is going to have more combos for the two-handed sword, and so on.

IGNPC: You gain certain amounts of experience for each enemy you kill then -- how much variety are we going to see in them?

Jose Raluy: I think there are around 30 different kinds of enemies you'll have to face through the game. And, like the playable characters, the behaviour of the enemies is totally varied, which will come across in battle scenes mainly. Some races just don't coordinate in combat for instance, while some others will gang up on you. That will obviously mean you'll have to adapt yourself depending on what you're fighting. For example, take the Orcs, they're quite stupid and they don't coordinate in combat at all. They'll just run at you individually, with their clubs or whatever. Unlike, for example, the dark knights, or some of the other characters that coordinate in combat. With the more intelligent enemies two of them might plan to co-ordinate in order to attack you from behind. One will be dummy-attacking you from the front or the side while the other will come at you from the other side, which will mean you'll have to think on your feet a bit.

IGNPC: But all enemies will pose some sort of challenge in their own way? Even the Orcs aren't just a pushover are they?

Jose Raluy: No, all the enemies will put up some sort of challenge even at their most basic levels. We were concerned to try to avoid the cannon-fodder hordes of creatures that can hardly damage you even at best so you don't even notice how many you've blown away or whatever. So, we've got two people just totally working on the AI to make sure all characters have got a general standard of intelligence, so they'll be intelligent enough to investigate sounds and stuff. We also wanted them to really react to the environment you find them in, and that's another part another guy is working on specifically. So they'll use items lying around against you, or smash things to get at you. Our aim is for characters to behave with different attitudes, in different ways, and to make the most of the situations they're presented with. For instance if a computer character is weaker than another, and he needs to bring something in to have more strength, he'll be able to do that himself -- just run off and go for health, or a more powerful weapon or object to help him out.

IGNPC: How will the combat work, because quite often in 3D games with melee weapons it's often quite awkward. How are you dealing with that?

Jose Raluy: Well we've got the combat system which is some ways is slightly similar to Prince of Persia. When you've got a current enemy engaged in battle, all your movements whilst you're focusing on that enemy are going to be around him, if you know what I mean. If you go right, you kind of sidestep right, rather then running off to the right you know? The combat system is more similar to fighting game styles, in that the sequences of keys that you're pressing will perform combo's or single moves. What actions you perform change depending on the level of experience that you've got, so that means you won't be just doing the same moves over and over through the game, and you wouldn't get very far against higher level of enemies if you did. This is slightly different to this type of game normally. Usually you get slightly limited moves in these exploration games or you get a load of moves in a limited environment ¿ here you've got both. You've also always got some kind of guide when you get to a new level and that's going to tell you what sort of new moves you've got. The weapons are going to have different colors depending on how powerful they are, so you'll easily be able to see if someone's got a really powerful weapon.

IGNPC: You've got a big range of weaponry on offer, but it varies from character to character how you use it?

Jose Raluy: Obviously you can use all the different sorts of weapons with any of the characters -- but with varying degrees of skill. We've also got several specific, and secret weapons which you get later in the game, and which we're keeping quiet about for now. Each weapon has got a specific set of characteristics, so we can link attacks to a specific weapon of the game. Other than the regular weapons you can also pick up practically any objects you have the strength to carry, and use them as weapons if you like -- and that includes chopped off limbs. For example, you can pick up a burning torch and throw it at your enemies. If they are unlucky enough to be standing near some wooden barrels, the barrels can be set on fire by the torch and cause burning injuries, which is pretty cool.

IGNPC: The environments are totally interactive then, so you can smash things up?

Jose Raluy: Yeah, you can break typical stuff like the furniture and barrels and stuff just for fun. At other times some things you'll smash up will allow you to pick stuff up, like you can get potions, you can get some foods, you can get some information. Sometimes it can be even more important, like in some scenario or at some specific point in the game you might have to destroy a wall to progress. But you have to do it by yourself, the wall won't just fall down for you. Sometimes things will happen in the environment just because you get into that area, like items will fall and break when you get into one place, which will give you a clue to something. Or there's an Earthquake for example and that will cause objects around you to tumble, not just shake the screen like in other games.

IGNPC: What we've seen of the game looks pretty impressive, but the game has been in development for a long time. Do you feel it's still competitive in what it offers?

Jose Raluy: It's not as much a case of the environments being competitive -- we've got the type of fancy effects like fogging and transparencies which are not uncommon nowadays. But with the characters we have some high-level AI, which you won't have seen in many games. And the physics system is fantastic -- all the objects respond to collisions with their environment with like 100 percent accuracy. The level of detail is immense, very highly optimised so we've got detail and solidity from floor to ceiling. With most 3D games you get problems, say when you get close to a wall and you can kind of see through it, if there's an object attached or something for example. With Blade though we've got a beautiful amount of detail all the way through, it really is looking polished.

IGNPC: We take it you've been modifying the engine over time?

Jose Raluy: Yeah, definitely. What you saw at the beginning of the game's development, it's all really been overhauled, from a development point of view at least. Nowadays it's stupid to make a game that doesn't take advantage of all the new technology available -- anyway nowadays we're using all the effects and all the tricks we can at this time.

IGNPC: Can we ask you about a publisher, do you know anything about who's going to be publishing the game yet?

Jose Raluy: I'm not sure yet. There are plenty of talks going on -- I know that some of the publishers interested are really big names, but I don't know if I can tell you about that. I think we are about to sign a contract but maybe not, so we'd better hold off on speculation there.

IGNPC: How long is there to go?

Jose Raluy: I think we're looking at a September release date lately. I mean, we've been changing the date a few times so we can get in all the parts that we want to include. I think it's more like September, maybe a bit earlier, but September I guess is a fair target.

IGNPC: Any plans for the consoles?

Jose Raluy: Yeah, we are quite interested in the consoles, right now though we are focusing on so many things in Blade that we haven't much time for much else. But there have been talks about several new projects. We've heard that the consoles are so easy to work with that it's quite likely that we are going to work on them internally -- so it's just a matter of having a look at the consoles, so far we don't have any developer's kits but when we can we'll definitely be looking at consoles, especially DC and PS2.

IGNPC: Have you got anything else on the cards at Rebel Act?

Jose Raluy: We have started talking to some people and we are on the brink of signing a new game -- I can't say exactly what it is, but it's a space game. But of course we are talking all the time -- and always looking for new projects. It looks like Blade is going to sell well, so possibly we are going to make Blade 2. But the next project will very likely be a totally different game with a sci-fi feel, which you'll have to wait to hear about.